Flotsam knocked over a pot of Angela's famously venomous bean stew and wolfed it down, with three days of asphyxiating results. Even Keith eventually noticed it wasn't him, lit a Flotsam flatus and set fire to the sofa. After Terry's call to the insurance company, the manager, Adelaide Swarthy, tore up their household policy, resigned and went home to Cheam to drink a bottle of sherry.

Adelaide was awoken later by her overweight tabby cat, Flabby, rolling the empty bottle across the floor. Through the fog she gradually remembered that she had left her job with six years of mortgage still to pay in a bad labour market, and to blame for her unemployment and sherry nausea was the Hardparcel family. With a flash of blinding clarity and an ancient Carpathian oath she swore vengeance. Their never-ending claims supported by those

fake police and fire reports signed by the obviously invented Officer Rabindranath and Sergeant Cressida added up to a vicious persecution aimed at ruining her peace of mind and undermining her whole life. But why the conspiracy? What had she done to them? Was it some deep inter-family curse she knew nothing about, from generations ago? Could Hardparcel be an Anglicisation of some old Romanian name, were they really Arteni-petrescus from Piatr-Neamt? Oh god, would she suffer their savage attacks on her mental health even after quitting the insurance company? Would driving stakes through their hearts even stop them? Where does one buy stakes in London?

She dragged on her rubber boots and staggered out into the south London blizzard to look for somewhere that would sell her cat-food, garlic, a crucifix, sharpened staves and more sherry.